Step 7: Let there be power!

The Internet has become a pretty good mask to portray yourself as anything you want. This includes hiding your true emotions when posting facebook statuses, IMing someone, or sending emails (like telling you're boss they are awesome when they are really a jerk). But what about talking to someone in real life? How do you hide yourself then? That's where the Emoticon Helmet comes in. The person that you're talking to will never know how disgusted your face looks when you see their dress if you always show a happy face! Or how you're happy that you mean ol uncle died and you're smiling the entire time, but everyone else sees a frown.

This project was one that I've always wanted to do, but I never found the time to. But when the time rolled around for our final project in my Engineering 101 class, I suddenly found an excuse to make this ridiculous contraption. I first got the idea for this a while ago from the Mask of Emotion, but I couldn't actually find where to buy it. So why not do the next best thing and make one myself? It was a team project, so I did half of the work while my teammate did the other half. That's also why some of these pictures aren't the best quality, because he tried sending me the pictures, but there was a miscommunication, so I just pulled them off of a video he made over it.

The helmet has 12 faces total: happy, sad, neutral, mad, surprised, tired, confused, disgruntled, disgusted, elated, worried, and creepy. It is done with a set of 22 LEDs, 6 for each eye and 10 for the mouth. It is set up as a multiplex matrix and hooked up to an Arduino in the back of the helmet, which is powered by four AA batteries. The user can switch between the faces with 2 buttons on a controller in the user's hand.

Skip to 1:50 for the demo.

Step 1: Materials

What's a project without supplies? Things I used:
- a motorcycle helmet (can be any helmet as long as it has a visor)
- an Arduino Uno
- 22 red LEDs
- plenty of wire and ribbon wire
- 10 resistors
- 4-6 transistors (depends on how you set up the multiplex)
- experimental board
- 2 buttons
- button housing (an old mini M&Ms bottle)

Pretty nice but i don't think if I will like to wear it while driving. ;)

Seeing this made my day. I got an Arduino you can check out for the semester if you want. Find me on the 3rd floor of Wallace or shoot me an email.<br><br>Your Engr101 teacher.

:D <br>Thanks for the rent idea, but I got one for Christmas. Haven't made anything yet, but I'm looking at some interesting things that I could do with it. I'm glad you could find this, I really didn't tell anyone that this was up here lol. How selfish of me.... XD<br><br>Have fun with next semester's group! :)

Glad you have an Arduino now. Always feel free to hang out at the lab. We'd love to see you around. You can work on your projects up there and use the resources we have too.

I am buying the stuff...I can't open your code document! can you put it in a word document or something?

It's up now. I am truely sorry for how long it took. It took a while to get the Arduino program working and hindering me from accessing the file. Hope you have as much fun with it as I did! :)

Yes, I will have that ready soon. Sorry for the wait

You got my vote. Makes me wish I had a reason to wear one. Curious to see what it'd be like if you were to go 'all-out'; the features you've thought to include.<br><br>and who is the 'we' you kept referring to?

As I said on the first page, it was a group project for one of my Engineering classes. The 'we' is the group effort, and I must say that I couldn't have done it without them.

I like it! Can I suggest for a future development that you put a mini flamethrower on each side to show when you're particularly upset? Or one for the road, facing forward for that SMIDSY motorist who doesn't see you and pulls out in front of you?

lol, actually, you're not the first to suggest this.... XD<br>It mainly came down to money. Being a school project, I wanted to make it as cheap as I could. The only money spent on this was for the helmet. If I had done this as a personal project, I totally would've gone all out on it. :)